Today’s report that gross domestic product (GDP) rose at a 2.3 percent rate in the second quarter of 2015 is clearly an improvement over the 0.6 percent growth in the first quarter, but it indicates that growth for 2015 is likely to be disappointing.

EPI and its partners sent the following letter urging the Department of Labor to not extend the comment period for its proposal to raise the salary threshold under which salaried workers are eligible for overtime pay.

On Tuesday, July 28, 2015 at 12:00 PM Eastern, the Economic Policy Institute and the AFL-CIO will co-host a presentation by James Galbraith, an economist and professor at the University of Texas–Austin, on the Greek debt crisis and what the outcome of the negotiations is likely to mean for the Greek and European economies.

Testimony of EPI Vice President Ross Eisenbrey on July 23, 2015, before the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Workforce Protections’ hearing, “Examining the Costs and Consequences of the Administration’s Overtime Proposal.”
Secretary of Labor Tom Perez and President Obama should be applauded for the steps they have taken to restore and strengthen the Fair Labor Standards Act’s overtime protections.

Is it possible that SSDI has a noticeable impact on labor force participation, a measure that includes unemployed workers actively looking for work? It might, but as will be detailed in this blog post, there are more likely explanations for the relative decline in labor force participation in the United States compared to Europe, including more supportive labor market policies in Europe.

Between 2007 and 2014 the median worker’s wages and compensation declined, respectively, by 4.0 and 1.9 percent. Among the bottom 40 percent of workers there was an even greater decline in compensation than there was in wages, indicating that including benefits as well as wages in an analysis results in a more adverse trends

Raising the federal minimum wage to $12 by 2020 would restore its value to a level that ensures full-time work is a means to escape poverty, and would provide tens of millions of America’s lowest-paid workers with a small yet long-overdue improvement in their standard of living.

Hillary Clinton appropriately defines her economic policy goal as raising “incomes for hardworking Americans so they can afford a middle-class life” rather than “hitting some arbitrary growth target untethered to people’s lives and livelihoods.”

While it is evident that the overall rate of workers holding multiple jobs has decreased, a disparity emerges when this data is broken out by gender—namely, that working multiple jobs is something more prevalent among women, and young women in particular.

(This is the third of six blog posts on disability.)
In two earlier blog posts, I look at evidence compiled in Senate testimony by Stanford economist Mark Duggan arguing that financial incentives are driving a growth in disability rolls.

The referee might miss an occasional handball, but a soccer game isn’t rigged in favor of one group of players over another. Unlike a soccer game, the most powerful economic actors have rigged the labor market against everyday hardworking Americans.

In June, Supreme Court decisions on Obamacare and same-sex marriage overshadowed another important decision, this one on housing discrimination, confirming that the Fair Housing Act not only prohibits actions or policies that are intentionally bigoted, but also those that have the effect of disadvantaging minorities, even where no racist intent can be proven.

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Economic Policy Institute

EPI is an independent, nonprofit think tank that researches the impact of economic trends and policies on working people in the United States. EPI’s research helps policymakers, opinion leaders, advocates, journalists, and the public understand the bread-and-butter issues affecting ordinary Americans.